The higher beauties of the poem are not, we think, of the highest.
It has unity, completeness,- a beginning, middle and end. The tone,
too, of calm, hopeful, and elevated reflection, is well sustained
throughout. There is an occasional quaint grace of expression, as in
Nurse of full streams, and lifter up of proud
Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud-
or of antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in
The shock that burled
To dust in many fragments dashed and strewn
The throne whose roots were in another world
And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.
But we look in vain for something more worthy commendation. At the
same time the piece is especially free from errors. Once only we
meet with an unjust metonymy, where a sheet of water is said to
Cradle, in his soft embrace, a gay
Young group of grassy islands.
We find little originality of thought, and less imagination. But in
a poem essentially didactic, of course we cannot hope for the loftiest
breathings of the Muse.
To the Past is a poem of fourteen quatrains- three feet and four
alternately. In the second quatrain, the lines
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
are, to us, disagreeable. Such things are common, but at best,
repulsive.
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